It started with an enquiry about how much it would cost to replace our 60cm gas hob with a 90cm induction cooktop. It ended with a complete kitchen renovation, new flooring in the dining room, entrance and hall, a new window and new blinds. Ulises is a talented salesman as well as a talented tradesman.

He’d done a great job with out bathroom and ensuite upgrades in 2021, so, we discussed the terms and all agreed to the plan and suddenly it was just like old times again.

Designing a kitchen is pretty intimidating. In our case there wasn’t much room to make dramatic alterations, which I didn’t mind. Apart from the new cooktop and range hood, the main difference in the layout is the location of the oven. Moving it down under the cook top means there’s a lot more countertop space. 70cm doesn’t sound like much on paper, but it makes a big difference when you’ve got a lot of ingredients out. The slight reduction (about 3cm) of the width of the main bench doesn’t sound like much on paper, but it makes a big difference when you’ve got two people in the kitchen.

Another key features is all my streaming cabling is now embedded in the walls. I used to have many metres of USB, power and HDMI all over the place and although I got to a point with the cable management that was pretty neat, it was still… a feature of the kitchen.

Using patch panels and strategically placed pass-thru ports, everything is out of the way but easy to access, easy to deconstruct if necessary, to the point where you wouldn’t notice that the kitchen is a part-time studio. There were some complications with some of the cables that required the use of KY jelly to resolve, but that’s a story for another time…

The entire project went as quick as it could have, and nothing went wrong (that couldn’t be resolved promptly). It’s amazing how tired you can get, even when you’re not the one doing the actual work. Although, for the record, I’m now an honorary apprentice plumber and cabinet maker. It was almost fun, but I don’t miss having to climb through the ensuite window onto the toilet to get into the house.

A significant upgrade, a worthwhile investment, and no regrets. That’s what you want when a renovation is all said and done. And that’s what we got. You can see a video of the transition within the Cooking With BuzzMoo Season 4 trailer: